‘Any port in a storm?’

Jane probably doesn’t have a perfect answer but she probably does have the least bad one. As long as there is only chop and no swell in the harbour they shouldn’t bounce too much on the beach and once they are firmly aground they should be perfectly safe. Grounding the boat at the top of a falling spring tide, with a low barometer, will keep them safe but it might be a fortnight or even several months before they have a tide high enough to float her off again without a crane.

The perfect answer would probably be to make haste slowly. Stooge around for half an hour or maybe an hour and then ground the boat. This should avoid the risk of being neaped, and grounding when the tide is definitely falling would reduce the risk of pounding on the beach because the tide would be falling faster. On the down side there would be a risk of collision with a moored boat while motoring round the harbour in strong wind and fading light.

My readiness to agree with her answer could be due to bias, I made almost exactly the same decision on a wild night in the gathering dusk many years ago. My situation was slightly easier, in that the wind was from the northwest and it was just after high water. We did float the next day but only just. In defence of Jane’s answer I would argue that even though it might have involved considerable long-term inconvenience and possibly some danger of damage to the boat, it was highly unlikely to result in death or injury to people. Certainly better than the heroic choice of heading back out to sea in search of open water in which to ride out the gale. Nowhere in the Channel Islands on a dark night with a fast spring tide matches my idea of open water.

It would of course have been safer in the face of a forecast of deteriorating weather to have stayed in St Peter Port but if we all took the totally safe decision not to go to sea there would be no questions to answer – how dull.